The issue of Internet Explorer 7/8 and using old tools

I was having a discussion on Twitter with @dboueman about people not appearing keen to dump IE7/8. It became evident, that it’s pretty easy to loose meaning in 140 chars. Hence a blog post to get my thoughts down in a bit more detail.

People use old tools, from cars to bicycles to telephones, to, well yes, web browsers. Where there’s a safety issue at play, it needs to come down to Microsoft to provide patches and force the updates. We simply can’t expect the non technical to update and maintain their browsers any more than to expect me to touch up or restore artwork.

At the end of the day, if we want people to upgrade their browsers, we need to provide an imperative. Yes, I know about canvas and local storage etc, but honestly, does anyone else care. Wanting to use an application which requires a newer browser is the imperative we’re looking for, and something people understand.

But that’s all about users. What about developers. Let me be frank. If you develop applications for browsers/HTML/WebKit etc, and you’re not using the latest API’s and tools that HTML5 offers, because you want to support IE7/8, you’re selling your clients short and are making your work irrelevant. There is an easy upgrade path for users, with a choice in browsers, so why would you artificially restrict what you’re developing?

So you develop for a corporate standard operating environment which still uses IE7/8? Take some time out of coding and put together a business case for a browser upgrade. We’re the professionals, it’s our job to educate. Just don’t use words like Micro$oft, because that just makes you look like a twat who spends too much time on SlashDot.